Concept conversion

Hi there, have any of you kind folks been successful at converting Concept 2.6 to Unity Pro? I seem to be missing something. Thank You for any help.

I've done 3 so far, the first was when I worked for Schneider and the other two was when I was working as an SI. All three were water treatment plants with S908 Remote IO, but these were over 4-5 years ago. And with my current job its all Rockwell so I'm a little bit rusty.

It's not a conversion thats fully compatible, you'll need to read Schneider's Concept to Unity conversion manual. From my experience the main code issue was the Time Of Day clock functions (TOD). Ather gotcha's will be in the status words and bits. Unity uses a different addressing scheme too, so inputs will be %I, outputs will be %M, words will be %M etc instead of the old modbus style of 10000, 00000 and 40000, so you will need to check your IO mapping. I think I used the "bit to word" and "word to bit" FBD functions with adequate comments to make sure that I didn't lose my IO mapping.

You'll may also need to change the CPU model as Unity only supports the higher end CPUs. The firmware in the CPU and NOE modules will need to be upgraded too.

Concept to Unity conversion manual

link to download manual is here:

http://static.schneider-electric.us/docs/Automation Products/33002515.pdf

PS: for the trolls, noticed on reading my post that the words types will be %MW in Unity.

Page 15 from the manual describes the steps:

Step Action

1. Export your application out of your legacy programming system (e.g. as an ASC file out of Concept).

2. Create a new application in Unity Pro selecting a CPU with enough memory and the I/O access capabilities needed.
Optionally you can configure the I/O modules expected to be needed but you can modify the hardware configuration even later (see step 6).

3. Launch the conversion wizard in Unity Pro via Tools → Convert Partially.
Result: The conversion wizard asks you to select the exported legacy source
file.

4. Select the exported legacy source file.
Result: The converter analyzes the source file and displays the result in the 3
tabs of the conversion wizard.

5. Select the parts of the application (or the complete application) to be converted in the Structure tab.

6. Remap the I/O objects for getting them compliant with the new hardware
configuration. Concurrently you can modify the hardware configuration of the new application in Unity Pro.
Note: To save a backup file of your intermediate I/O mapping you can use the Save button. With Load you can reload your latest saved intermediate I/O mapping.

7. After finishing all your selections and manual modifications click OK.
Result: The converter applies the defined remapping to the selected parts of the source file and imports the results into the opened Unity Pro Application.

8. Continue working on the opened application, save it or export as an XEF file.

Hope it all goes well.

Thanks Michael. Yeah thats the user manual I used. I think one problem is that I created the Concept .ASC file in windows7 running a virtual XP machine, that may have corrupted the file but I'm not sure. The conversion wizard starts and does the analysis but at the end I get an error message "impossible to open source" One question I do have though... the manual says do not export the Concept project with DFB's so I did that. I'm not sure what affect that has during the Unity conversion. Anyways Thank you for your input, I'll stay after it. PS I grew up an AB/RS guy so this is all new to me.

I did the conversion the same way using VMWare virtual machines too.
My host was a 64bit Windows 7 Pro running a virtual XP machine to run
Concept 2.6. I doubt that is the problem.

I think that I did do the conversions with DFBs as there were too many not to do so. If you have not so already try upgrading the CPU to the highest you can in Concept first and then do the export to *.ASC format.

Another step would be to do partial conversion or even starting with a basic Concept project to do a trial first and progress from there.

What version of Unity are you using? I've got a few version on different VMs. Not sure if I have a VM with Concept 2.6 anymore to try, but I can check. If I do I might be able able help, if you can can send me the Concept *.ASC.

One problem that can cause that or similar error is that in concept it was not necessary to fully configure the plc system. Open the project in concept and check that the cpu and all the io cards are present in the configuration. When done then export as an ascii file and then import into Unity